With the advancement of consumer electronic devices, a vast number of pictures are taken by mobile devices and digital cameras every day. Digital images can be viewed on devices, shared over computer networks, and incorporated into designs for photo products.
Handling large number of digital images is a challenge to photographers, and has become an obstacle to the images' utilizations. As mobile phones and digital cameras have made photo taking very convenient, people often snap many pictures of the same scene at each moment especially if it is a special occasion. These pictures tend to be very similar to each other, comprising the similar backgrounds with the same people having similar facial expressions. The current image software usually display all the captured images on devices, which can be overwhelming for viewing, editing, and using in product design or electronic sharing. Users have to carefully compare these similar photos, remove most of them, and keep one or a few for display for each set of people at each scene. Since people's facial expressions often only have minute differences, it is extremely hard to tell these photos apart even with examining at image magnifications. Trimming photos have become a time-consuming task for most photographers.
Similarly, photo products such as photobooks are often segmented by a series of scenes and activities in an occasion or a story such as a vacation, a trip, or a project. Typically, users only need one to a few photos for each set of people at each scene. Again, curating the photos in the context of a design style and layouts can be very time consuming.
There is therefore an immediate need for assisting photographers to sort, organize, and reduce numbers of photos to make their photo experiences in viewing and creative designs more enjoyable and less time consuming.